Senior Product Manager

About the Role

Coherent is seeking a Product Manager to drive strategy, financial performance, and lifecycle management for assigned optical-communications products. This role partners with Sales, R&D, Operations, and Supply Chain to deliver profitable growth in high-speed networking markets.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain product strategy and roadmap aligned with Business Unit priorities.
• Manage product-line revenue, bookings, backlog, forecast, pricing, gross margin, and cost performance; review monthly results and coordinate corrective actions.
• Provide product-level market, volume, pricing, cost, and investment assumptions for annual budgeting and long-range planning.
• Monitor and maximize revenue and gross margins; identify and coordinate cost-reduction and margin-improvement initiatives.
• Develop business cases for new products, R&D programs, and capital investments; track approved investments against business-case assumptions.
• Partner with Sales to identify, qualify, and prioritize design-win opportunities; develop customer engagement plans and coordinate cross-functional execution.
• Build and maintain strong business and technical relationships with customer teams; translate customer and market requirements into manufacturable, commercially viable product requirements.
• Support Sales with bookings, revenue growth, and customer adoption; work on competitive proposals including specifications, schedules, and pricing.
• Document product requirements and communicate them clearly to development and operations teams; support customer proposals, product positioning, demonstrations, prototypes, and technical responses.
• Coordinate with Engineering and Applications teams to provide timely customer technical support and resolve product-related issues; conduct win/loss analysis.
• Own product requirements and lifecycle plans from concept through end of life; prepare product business cases and support approval of new development projects.
• Monitor schedule, cost, technical performance, quality, and product-readiness milestones; identify program risks and coordinate mitigation plans.
• Support the transition of new products and processes into volume production; ensure product qualification, reliability, and compliance information is current.
• Develop unconstrained demand forecast with Sales and customers; participate in revenue planning and S&OP.
• Monitor order fulfillment, inventory, capacity, lead-time, on-time delivery, quality, cost, and margin performance; coordinate product-specific supply issues with Operations and Supply Chain.
• Benchmark product costs and work with Operations, NPI, Supply Chain, and contract manufacturers to achieve cost and margin targets.
• Support supplier and contract-manufacturer evaluations; provide product and business input to sourcing decisions and negotiations.
• Monitor customer requirements, market trends, industry roadmaps, and competitive developments; develop product strategy and roadmap recommendations.
• Develop product positioning, value propositions, launch collateral, customer presentations, and sales-training materials.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or a related technical discipline; MBA or advanced engineering degree preferred.
• Eight or more years of relevant experience in optical communications, high-speed networking, product management, engineering, or a related field.
• Five or more years of direct product management, product-line management, or equivalent commercial product ownership experience.
• Strong understanding of high-speed optical transceivers and related technologies; familiarity with hyperscale datacenter, networking equipment, switch, and ASIC vendor ecosystems.
• Experience managing products through the lifecycle and developing requirements, business cases, forecasts, pricing recommendations, and roadmaps.
• Demonstrated ability to influence cross-functional teams and deliver measurable business results without direct organizational authority.

Skills

• Strong understanding of product-line financials, including revenue, pricing, product cost, gross margin, forecast, and investment business cases.
• Ability to translate customer and market requirements into clear product requirements and commercially viable plans.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and data-driven decision-making skills; ability to manage multiple priorities and complex issues.
• Ability to influence global, cross-functional teams and work effectively with customers in a multicultural environment.
• Strong customer-management, communication, negotiation, and presentation skills; high standards of integrity, accountability, and judgment.

Working Conditions

Typical climate-controlled professional office environment. Routine use of standard office equipment such as computers, phones, copiers, and filing cabinets.

Physical Requirements

The employee is regularly required to talk or hear, frequently stand, walk, use hands to finger, handle or feel, and reach with hands and arms.

About Us

Coherent is a global leader in lasers, engineered materials, and networking components. We are a vertically integrated manufacturing company developing innovative products for industrial, optical communications, military, life sciences, semiconductor equipment, and consumer markets. Coherent offers a comprehensive career development platform within an environment that challenges employees to perform at their best, rewarding excellence and hard work through a competitive compensation program.